Germany’s net exports and macroeconomic policy stance are controversial issues in current debates about the Eurozone debt crisis. This paper shows that both are characteristics of what has been described in a variety of political economy literatures as the German socio-economic model. We argue...

It is frequently argued that credit rating agencies (CRAs) have acted procyclically in their rating of sovereign debt in the European Monetary Union (EMU). They are believed to have under-rated sovereign risk in the early years of EMU, when integrated financial markets provided easier access to...

We study the information content of about 3,300 global bank rating changes before and after the Lehman shock in September 2008 from an equity investor's perspective. Based on a multi-model event study approach, we find that while upgrades are not associated with significant abnormal bank stock...

Rating agencies strive to assign reliable, objective and comparable credit ratings as an indicator on one consistent scale. We test empirically how rating agencies meet their promise of providing objective and comparable assessments of credit risk of an issuer and thus creditworthiness. Logistic...

The notion of 'transnational governance' refers to systems in which private actors and other non- state institutions participate in setting and enforcing norms for cross-border transactions in trade, finance and other business. While the term is modern, the co-evolution of world markets and...

Despite the transnational character of the Great Depression of the years 1929-33, there are few works in the inter-war literature that deal in depth with the propagation of business cycles across national borders and systemic risks of depression in the world economy. Two notable exceptions are...

In this paper, we analyze technology transfers (TT) and tradable emission rights, which are core is-sues of the ongoing climate negotiations. Subsidizing TT leads to the adoption of better abatement technologies in the South, thereby reducing the international permit price. This is beneficial...

The idea of an “economic constitution” was developed by a group of German economists and lawyers in the Weimar Republic which sought a “third way” – the “ordo-liberal way” – between laissez-faire liberalism and socialist politics. Ordo-liberalism survived the Third Reich...

The aim of this paper is to explore the political dimensions of investment arbitration. What drives the structures and rules of this institution of private-transnational dispute settlement? To define political dimensions and develop the basis of a political explanation of investment arbitration,...

Climate effects of unilateral carbon policies are undermined by carbon leakage. To counteract leakage and increase global cost-effectiveness carbon tariffs can be imposed on the emissions embodied in imports from non-regulating regions. We present a theoretical analysis on the economic...